


take my hand (we'll make it i swear)

by impulserun



Series: age of miracles [1]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-15
Updated: 2014-07-15
Packaged: 2018-02-08 23:53:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1960983
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/impulserun/pseuds/impulserun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Avengers AU nobody asked for.</p><p>(In which Enjolras is Captain America and Grantaire is the Winter Soldier.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	take my hand (we'll make it i swear)

“I’m not him,” he snarls, from behind a glass wall. “I have his face and his memories, but I’m not him. I’m not the man you were _fucking_ –”

Enjolras slams a fist into the reinforced glass, hears the vibrations ripple outwards. Grantaire – no, the man who has Grantaire’s face, he has to stop thinking of him like that – stops. Stares at him.

“I know.” The words come out in a whisper. “I know you’re not – I know you can never be Grantaire. Do you think I don’t already know that? Do you think I don’t stay up at night trying to convince myself, trying to stop myself from coming to see you? Do you _think_ –” He cuts himself off, bites back his words. There are tears swelling up unbidden in his eyes. He doesn’t know when he started shouting.

There is a dark, bitter smile on Not-Grantaire’s lips.

“Good,” he says. “Then listen to reason and leave me the fuck alone.”

He feels broken. He probably already is.

“Goodbye, Grantaire.”

Enjolras turns around and walks out. The hydraulic doors whir closed behind him. There are tears slowly sliding down his face.

Enjolras doesn’t know why or how his feet find their way to the roof.

*

In his cell, Grantaire – because, dodgy as his memories are, Grantaire sounds a fuck lot better than ‘Anton’ or ‘Alexey’ or even the fucking _Winter Soldier_ – stays on his feet for long enough to watch the blond stalk out of the containment unit. Long enough to watch the doors slide shut. Then his legs give way and he crumples to the floor.

He doesn’t think he can take much more of this.

He hopes Enjolras doesn’t come back.

But he does. He always does. And _fuck_ , doesn’t he know what he does to Grantaire? Doesn’t he know that every time he looks at Grantaire with those _eyes_ , or smiles at him with those _lips_ , or even when he just fucking _sits there,_ everything he does dislodges _another memory_? Of trains, of trucks, of campfires and forests and _can’t let them hear us_ and _fuck the others I want to **touch** you_ and –

Grantaire’s breath hitches. He brings his mismatched hands up to knead at his eyes.

Every time Enjolras looks at him, he hears _I love you_ , and every time he thinks _I don’t deserve you_ in reply.

“You,” a voice says, flatly, “are an _idiot_ , Nikolai.”

“That’s not my name any more, _Talya_ ,” he spits. “Or is it Alma now? Nastasia? Katarina?”

“Eponine,” she says smoothly, flipping some of her long brown hair (it had been red and curly a week ago) behind her shoulder. “It’s been Eponine for about ten years now, give or take a few. So what should I call you now? Kiril? Misha? You’re obviously not Grantaire, seeing how you’ve made that oh so clear to the Captain himself. Dmitri? Yasha? Sebastian? I could go on and on –”

“What did you come here for?” says Grantaire through gritted teeth. He cannot bring himself to meet Eponine’s eyes.

The easy smile on her face slips. “I’ve been keeping track of all your conversations with Enjolras. Do you have _any_ idea what you’ve done to him?”

 _Enjolras_ slips off her tongue like it means something to her. A flare of possessive jealousy rises up in his chest; Grantaire quashes it down.

“When you resurfaced,” she says, eyes cold. “As the Soldier. Enjolras threw himself into finding you again. Wouldn’t take no for an answer. We all tried to talk him out of it, but he wouldn’t listen. He swore up and down you dragged him out of the Potomac. He _believed_ in you.”

That phrase sends him back in time, to _before_.

He’s sitting at a bar, mind almost in a blur, holding a glass of cheap beer in his hands. He remembers being strapped down, faces leering down at him from behind a drug-fuelled haze. He still can’t quite believe he survived. Enjolras comes to sit by him, the dirt and grime from the mission wiped off his face. He’s different now. Taller, but only just slightly. He has muscles now, but he’s still slender, slimmer than Grantaire will ever be. His eyes are still the same, though. He thinks they will always be the same.

“So,” he says, smile not reaching his eyes. “You ready to follow Captain America into the jaws of death?”

“Nah,” Grantaire replies. “It’s not him I believe in. I believe in you.”

“Do you have any idea how much you’ve hurt him?” Eponine hisses, and she tears Grantaire back to the present just like that.

He clenches both his fists, ignoring the memory of blue eyes – dark, bleak, resigned, like the light has gone out of them – that his traitorous brain dredges up, because he can only remember one other time Enjolras’ eyes have looked like that – _finish it, cos I’m with you_ – and that memory is not one he wants to revisit any time soon.

“You of all people should understand,” he bites out, thinking of the slight young man with black hair who calls himself Hawkeye, who took out his metal arm with one of his damned arrows, who is more comfortable around Eponine than maybe even he ever was. “I don’t _deserve_ him. I’m a mess. I’ve _killed_ people. Not just my targets – I’ve killed innocent civilians in cold blood. He doesn’t deserve that.”

“You know I do. That is why you are an idiot, Grantaire.”

There is silence, for a moment. The two (ex?) assassins stare each other down. Then Eponine’s communicator crackles to life, barely loud enough for Grantaire’s enhanced hearing to pick up.

“Black Widow, do you copy? Eagle has left the building. I repeat, Eagle has left the building.”

“What the fuck do you mean Eagle has left the building? _Where is he_?”

*

The reason, Enjolras thinks, he was able to get up on the roof without people stopping him, is because Montparnasse is out on some covert undercover operation. The archer would have stopped him long ago if he hadn’t been.

For now, Enjolras is content to let his feet dangle from the ledge of Avengers Tower’s (Courfeyrac thought he was _so funny_ ) roof. The city looks so small from here. He is – was – an immigrant, but New York is more home to him than the faint stories of _Patria_ his mother used to tell him. He remembers running down these streets, growing up with Grantaire in Brooklyn –

His heart constricts, tears prick at his eyes, and Enjolras lets go of the ledge with one hand to scrub furiously at his face.

 _Grantaire_ , he thinks, bitterly. He could never stay angry at him for too long. But it hurts too much now to even think of him, down in that cell, locked away from the world and believing that he should stay there, that Enjolras should forget him, because –

The tears flow freely; Enjolras stops trying to fight them back. He just rocks back on the ledge, pulls his knees in, hugs his legs to his chest.

A detached part of his mind wonders how fast it would take the serum to heal him, if he let himself fall.

*

“JAVERT,” Eponine orders. “Find him. Search all the security cameras if you have to.”

The AI whirs to life with a gravelly “At once, miss.”

“Cosette, any news? No? Keep searching, if he’s on foot he can’t have gone far – yes, I’ve seen the man run, you have wings, you can _fly_ –”

Eponine continues to bark out orders over her headset, but Grantaire’s brain isn’t really paying attention at this point. Shit, this is like the late 1930s all over again, having to look down every alley to see if Enjolras is in there getting his ass kicked, only worse, because this time it’s his fault, it’s his fault, he promised to _protect_ him, it’s _his fault_ –

“Fire escape,” Grantaire’s mouth says of its own accord. Eponine raises an eyebrow. “Back then, when we were kids. When he was upset, he always climbed out the fire escape.”

Eponine frowns for a moment and opens her mouth, as if to say “I doubt Courfeyrac built in any fire escapes in this tower, Grantaire,” but then her eyes light up and she’s running out the door, yelling instructions at JAVERT as she goes.

Just before she leaves, Grantaire hears “the roof”.

*

It’s barely five minutes after Eponine leaves before Grantaire is pressed against the glass, pleading to thin air.

“Let me go to him,” he begs. “Please – he needs me – I’m the one who started this whole mess – let me help him, _please_. I can’t – I can’t lose him again.”

He doesn’t know if anyone will hear him, if anyone is still keeping watch over his cell. There _has_ to be. There just _has_ to.

Grantaire has never believed in God, but he closes his eyes and starts to pray.

“Please,” he whispers.

The clinical silence of the room gives way to quiet clicks and beeps; then, the door to his cell unlocks and swings open. So does the door to the containment unit.

The screen he thought was a wall flickers off, revealing the discerning gaze of a young man – well, greying at the temples a little, but still younger compared to him – in glasses and a crumpled purple shirt.

“The lift at the end of the corridor,” he says. “Passcode’s 1832. It’ll take you straight to the roof.”

“I –” he says, amazed. “I – thank you.”

“You hurt him,” Purple Shirt says, in a tone remarkably like Eponine’s. “A lot. You better make up for that. Or you and I are going to have _words_.”

Grantaire nods, once, sombrely. Then he’s running out the door, sprinting towards the lift and punching in the passcode.

 _Enjolras_ , he thinks. _I won’t let you down. Not this time._

*

“Enjolras?”

The blond is perched on the edge of the roof. He looks almost a little like Montparnasse really, if she squints a little and colours his hair black.

“’Ponine,” he murmurs, just loud enough for her to hear over the howling of the wind. “Did JAVERT tell you where to find me?”

“You could say that.” The wind blows some of her hair into her face; Eponine wishes she had a hair tie. “So, what brings you up to Parnasse’s penthouse?”

“It’s a good vantage point of the city,” comes the distant reply. Silence.

The truth is, she is stalling for time. Waiting for Cosette to make it back from where Eponine had sent her on a wild Captain chase. If need be, she thinks to herself, she has a tranquiliser gun. It shouldn’t be that hard for the Falcon to catch an unconscious Captain America.

At last, Enjolras speaks. “It’s beautiful, but it’s not – it’s not home.” A bitter laugh. “Sometimes, I think – if I hadn’t been so damn eager to go off and fight in the war – this wouldn’t have happened. None of this – Grantaire wouldn’t have – I wouldn’t be –”

Abruptly, he hunches, stops speaking. Eponine’s eyes dart from where he is sitting to the open skies; Cosette is nowhere to be seen.

“It’s my fault, Eponine.”

She raises an eyebrow at the back of Enjolras’ blond head. “Why do you say that?”

“Because it _is_.” Enjolras says this with as much conviction as he would have said ‘Consent is _important_ ,’ or ‘I have to, Grantaire _needs_ me,’ or even, ‘Cavendish bananas are _disgusting_.’ “If I hadn’t kicked up such a huge fuss about enlisting, he wouldn’t have enlisted either – he’d never have gotten into HYDRA’s hands – he’d never have fallen, never have _become_ –”

“What if he’d been drafted anyway?” she asks quietly. The man – is he a man, really, because he looks so _young_ – halts, as if struck silent by a bolt of lightning.

“I would’ve followed him, then. I’d always have followed him.” He pauses. Eponine surreptitiously checks the tranq in her belt. “But the point is, Grantaire enlisted because of me. And now – He didn’t deserve to go through all of that. No one ever does. And it’s because of me that he did – it’s my fault, Ponine.”

“Well then,” comes a cool voice, from the doorway behind her. “You have the rest of your life to make it up to me, don’t you?”

The air stills, there’s just enough time for Eponine to think _Who the fuck_ and _Combeferre_ , and then Enjolras turns around, forget-me-not blue eyes wide and wet.

 “Grantaire?” he whispers.

“You punk,” says Grantaire, “What happened to the end of the line, huh?”

*

The next thing Enjolras is consciously aware of is his face buried in Grantaire’s chest, and a pair of strong arms wrapped protectively around his sides.

“Gran _taire_ ,” he chokes out, a sob catching in his throat.

“Yeah, Enj, ‘sme.” A quiet huff. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be,” he tries to say, but his words are lost in the comforting warmth of Grantaire’s _chest_ , shit, he’s missed this more than he realised. It really has been seventy years since Enjolras last hugged him like this, with his head tucked under Grantaire’s chin.

“I fucked up, Enjolras,” he hears him say. One of his hands – the flesh-and-blood one – gently strokes his hair. “I – I was scared. I’ve done things. Things I’m not proud of.”

 _So have I_ , he thinks. Letting R fall. Not demanding a full-out search of the Alps. Not killing that smarmy lying doctor when he had the chance. Giving up. Lying to Cosette about attending therapy.

He wrestles free of Grantaire’s grip, reaching up to place a hand on either side of his stubbled face. “Grantaire,” he says, slow and clear. “That wasn’t you.”

“But it was,” he argues with a shake of his head. “I have the memories – all of them. I killed all those people, I didn’t even _flinch_ – civilians, Enj. Women. Children. I didn’t care who died, as long as I –”

“You were brainwashed,” he cuts in. “Programmed.”

“But if I had fought against the programming – if I could have broken free, like Eponine –”

“Trust me,” says Eponine drily, “you really couldn’t have. We were under completely different security levels. Really. Trust me on this one.”

“But –”

“It doesn’t matter to me, R,” Enjolras says firmly. “To me, you will always be Jacob Grantaire Sargent, and I will always be Enjolras Lécuyer. _Your_ Enjolras Lécuyer.”

Grantaire laughs wetly. There are traces of tears in his eyes. “I really hate that name.”

Things will be okay, he decides, nuzzling back into the hollow of Grantaire’s neck. With Grantaire by his side again, he can take on anything.


End file.
